An executive for sports television giant ESPN said Wednesday that he wants to see “significant” coverage of high school athletics on the new University of Texas network “to reflect what's culturally important” in the state.

But he insisted that the coverage plan won't jeopardize UT's principles of abiding by NCAA rules.

“First of all, we're partners with UT on this,” said Burke Magnus, ESPN Senior Vice President for College Sports Programming. “Secondly, I would say, we would never put the school in any circumstance by which they would compromise themselves relative to the NCAA, by anything that shows up on the network.”

Byrne questioned whether the NCAA should allow the network, in a business relationship with UT, to air events involving college prospects as part of its 24-hour programming.

Magnus hinted that the plan was under review within the UT athletics department.

“We'll rely on their expertise in this area in terms of compliance — and whether or not there's a problem here or not has not been determined yet — but it certainly goes without saying that nothing will happen in this area that would compromise UT in any way,” he said.

Officials announced on Jan. 19 a 20-year, $300 million agreement between UT, ESPN and IMG College — UT's media rights partner — for a network covering university athletics, music, cultural arts and academic programs.

As part of the deal for the network, set to launch in September, officials said they hoped to showcase high school sports events.

Nick Voinis, UT's senior associate athletic director, said the university has been looking at the issue of airing high school sports events for about a year.

“ESPN is in the programming business,” Voinis said. “They're looking at a variety of different programming content. It's still early and nothing is set in stone.”

Magnus said on Wednesday that he wants to settle the issue of the high school sports programming on the UT network within “three to four” months.

“I would place it in the category of work in progress,” he said. “Sort of broadly speaking, we understand the importance of high school athletics to the people of the state of Texas. We have this notion that in order to reflect what's culturally important ... high school athletics has to be part of this somehow.”

Magnus said part of the plan “unrelated to the (UT) network specifically” is that ESPN would create a broadband portal devoted to prep sports content.

He said he hoped to “create a streaming product where we could aggregate high school games from all around the state ... and just try to create a clearinghouse for high school content.”

Another concept, he said, is event coverage on the network.

“We'd like it to be significant enough so that it's not just a game that pops up here and then, six weeks later, there's another game,” Magnus said.